rk911 wrote:
are you kidding me? people do a lot more driving than the average 15-mi one-way daily commute. grocery stores, music lessons, banking, dry cleaners, hardware stores, doctor visits, school activities, yadda, yadda, yadda. all of that adds up to way more than 20-mi per day. don't believe me...set your trip odometer to 0 and drive for a week. heck, I put 10-mi on the jeep just going round trip to the doc and 5-mi round trip going to the bank (yup, some folks still actually go to a bank...not everything can be done on line). a cheap daily go-to-work-and-run-around-town EV had better have a range of at least 100-miles, be able to sit at least 4 or 5-people and have adequate cargo room. maybe we'll get there....one day.
No I'm not kidding you.
51% of commutes are below 20 miles round trip based on FHWA studies. Bump that up to 30 miles round trip and you are at 70% of all commutes. That's 51% who would rarely start the gas engine and another 19% who will still get more than 2/3 of their miles under electricity.
If your employer has power stations available, that 20 mile range allows for a 40 mile round trip and almost 80% of commutes are 100% electric.
Yes, there are people who commute longer distances (I used to do 60 miles round trip). If you get to the extreme, it's not as good of an option but this is the beauty of the plug in hybrid. You can actually use all of the battery power and then supplement with the gas engine and when you do take those weekend road trips of a few hundred miles, you just switch over to gas mode without even thinking about it.
